Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
The original Better World Report, a book AUTM produced profiling 25 technology-transfer case studies contributed by member institutions across the U.S. and Canada -- including well-known outcomes such as the V-chip, the Honeycrisp apple, and the cochlear implant -- each tracing a specific invention from university lab to commercial product.
- Is an instance
The annual Better World Project Award, through which AUTM member institutions nominate a specific licensed technology for public recognition; AUTM has run award cycles in multiple recent years, including 2025 and 2026, each naming a distinct winning story on its site.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A technology transfer office's internal annual report listing every license, option, and disclosure executed that year is not a Better World Project story -- it is administrative/financial reporting for internal and government use, not a curated public-impact narrative about one named technology.
- Not an instance
A generic description of 'what technology transfer offices do' with no specific institution, invention, or commercialization outcome named does not qualify -- Better World Project entries are always tied to one identifiable technology and its actual path to market.
Editorial commentary
The AUTM Better World Project is a public-facing initiative run by AUTM (the Association of University Technology Managers, the professional association for the technology transfer field) that collects and publishes narrative case studies of specific university, hospital, or federal-lab inventions that were licensed and commercialized into products or services with a documented, real-world societal benefit. Where most technology-transfer reporting is aimed at administrators, licensees, or funding agencies, the Better World Project is written for a lay and policymaker audience: its purpose is to make the abstract case for technology transfer — that licensing university research out to industry produces things people actually use — concrete, one named invention at a time.
Origin: from a printed report to an ongoing storytelling initiative
The project traces back to AUTM’s Better World Report, a book profiling 25 technology-transfer case studies contributed by AUTM member institutions across the U.S. and Canada, including outcomes such as the V-chip, the Honeycrisp apple, and the cochlear implant. AUTM subsequently expanded this into an ongoing, web-based storytelling effort — reported by secondary sources including the State Science and Technology Institute (SSTI) and the NIH’s own technology-transfer news page as now describing more than 100 breakthroughs attributed to university technology transfer — rather than a single fixed edition. AUTM continues to publish and update these stories, along with year-specific award pages, directly on its own site at autm.net.
The Better World Project Award
Alongside the story archive, AUTM runs an annual Better World Project Award: member institutions nominate a specific licensed technology, and AUTM recognizes winning and finalist stories each cycle on dedicated pages (AUTM’s site shows award cycles including 2025 and 2026, among earlier years). Winning a Better World Project Award is a form of public and peer recognition for a technology transfer office, distinct from any of the financial or legal milestones — disclosure, patent filing, license execution — that make up the underlying technology transfer process itself.
How it’s used by research administrators and TTOs
For a technology transfer office, the Better World Project functions as an advocacy and communications resource as much as an awards program: a ready-made library of concrete, non-technical examples that institutions, AUTM itself, and policymakers can point to when explaining why technology transfer offices exist and what the Bayh-Dole Act framework was designed to enable. TTOs also use the nomination process itself as an internal exercise — identifying which of their own licensed technologies has a commercialization story clear and public enough to be told outside a legal or financial context.
Related CASRAI content
See CASRAI’s technology transfer entry for the fuller definition of the underlying process, Bayh-Dole Act for the federal-funding legal framework that makes most of these stories possible, and the Technology Transfer & Innovation pillar for the broader map of invention disclosure, licensing, and commercialization content on this site.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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